wasn’t at all mid-way from first-stage—and, he recollected with a sinking
feeling, he’d learned already that the road crews put things not where they’d like
to have them but where they could put them. One set of expectations was skewed
by processes he hadn’t thought about, and other expectations could be, reason
told him in this thunderstruck moment, thrown off by the same logic. He’d
assumed by the name of midway—where he had no business to assume.
But panic didn’t serve anybody. They’d make the shelter. Just—maybe—not
before dark.
A little beyond that turn a fold of the mountain came between them and the worst
gusts. Cloud stopped and turned his tail to the wind that did reach them, taking a
breather on his own schedule and at his opportunity, which Cloud did when his
needs exceeded the rests they took.
At such moments Danny and the Goss boys had generally stopped standing—but
a pileup of sleet against the mountain afforded them a brake on the travois’
tendency to skid downhill and afforded a chance for a rest. Danny saw it, turned
his own back to the gale and stood there just breathing, with the wind battering
the back brim of his hat flat up against his head, and waited as a living signpost
in the haze until the two muffled figures overtook him with the travois.
Then he squatted down, and fell the last bit onto his rump, his knees beyond pain
and refusing such delicate adjustments. He got up into a crouch his legs didn’t
want to hold, but did, as Carlo had sat down after much the same fashion—he’d
taken to heart the lesson about not sitting on the ground, but Randy just collapsed
helplessly downward and stayed.
Blacksmith’s kids, both, and Carlo had the height and the arms Randy had yet to
grow to. Carlo shoved his brother, said simply, “Squat,” and Randy managed to
get up off the ground and hold the position, with Carlos strong arm around him.
After that no one had the energy to talk, just sat huddled up against the wind, the
boys probably with the same sick headache, Danny thought, that increasingly
pounded behind his sinuses and behind his eyes and around his skull.
It was altitude causing that. He’d felt it a little down at the cabin with the senior
riders, and Guil had warned him it could get debilitating—which he couldn’t
afford right now. Mouth was dry. They hadn’t eaten all day. He didn’t think he
could swallow the thawed food he carried; eating snow relieved the dryness but
chilled the bones, so he just took a little mouthful, after which he shut his
eyes—partly to ease the headache and partly just to warm them from the wind.
But even with his eyes shut, he saw them all <sitting in snow> from Cloud’s
senses, a moving sort of vision as Cloud came trudging back. <Tired horse, ice
lumps in his tail, banging against his hocks.>
He had so much rather have nursed his headache and caught his breath
undisturbed, but he couldn’t let that annoyance go on. He bestirred himself to
check over Cloud’s feet for ice-cuts: the threefold hooves had a soft spot high up
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